Most businesses make marketing so much harder than it needs to be.
This is because they focus on the 20% of marketing that is difficult, expensive and unpredictable. And, at the same time, they pay little or no attention to the other 80% – the stuff that’s easy and inexpensive.
Let me show you what I mean.
In business, we do certain things to bring in money:
- We go out into the marketplace (literally or figuratively) and tell people about our product/service.
- When people enquire – or visit our website – we try to turn those enquiries into sales.
- While they’re buying, we may offer them a deal on complimentary products or services.
- Once we’ve sold something to someone, we try to maintain a relationship with them where they continue to buy from us again and again.
- And, if they’re happy, we sometimes receive referrals from them, which means additional customers/enquiries.
The 5 Steps of the Sales/Marketing Process
These are what I call “The 5 Steps of the Sales/Marketing Process”
1. External Lead Generation
2. Converting leads to clients
3. Up-selling
4. Re-selling
5. Referrals
If you improve your effectiveness in any one of those areas, you’ll increase your sales.
So, if you bring in 10% more leads, all things being equal, your sales will increase by 10%. Or, if you have the same number of enquiries but close 10% more of them, that’s 10% increase in sales, too.
And so on …
Here’s The Point(s)
There are two points I want to make:
(1) When they want to increase sales, the majority of businesses focus on just one of these five areas … and they almost always choose the most difficult, dangerous and expensive area (trying to increase leads/website visitors).
(2) If you work on all 5 areas at the same time, you get compound growth.
For example, improving each by 10%, gives you a 61% increase in sales.
(1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 = 1.61)
And, if you really focus on your marketing hire a pro to do that for you … hint, hint) and improve each step by 20%, that’s a 149% increase.
Best Wishes
Steve Gibson
PS A 61% increase in sales isn’t a 61% increase in profits, it’s probably 200% or 300%. To find out why, read this: Small changes = big profits.
